From the Back Cover
The Violent E provides a detailed description of spelling development that will help teachers recognize and monitor growth and plan effective spelling programs for their students. Using detailed descriptions of growth in spelling developed by following children from kindergarten through grade 6, the book highlights what is really important in learning to spell, and while focusing on the uniqueness of each child, helps teachers attend to what children actually say and do as they come to understand spelling.
Building on the extensive body of knowledge about early spelling, this book extends understanding of spelling into the less documented periods from grades 3 through 6. From beginning to end the authors keep a perspective on reading and writing, and demonstrate the vital role that reading and writing play in learning to spell. By comparing the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful spellers, they are able to show a direct link between observations of learning and specific approaches to instruction. The good spellers demonstrate that the basis for their success is their ability to understand the systematic nature of spelling, rather than the ability to learn a set of discrete spellings. This key understanding is grounded in their experiences as readers and writers. The book is filled with excerpts from children's writing and their conversations as they try to figure out and explain how to spell words. These conversations give insights into how children make sense of spelling and of instruction.
The Violent E provides teachers and teacher educators with ways to teach spelling that are grounded in the reality of how children learn to spell. These suggestions for instruction include approaches to spelling that can be integrated with reading and writing activities as well as activities that allow children to investigate how spelling works in complex but systematic ways.
About the Author
Dennis Searle (Ph.D. University of London) began his career teaching high school English in Manitoba, Canada, and most recently was on the faculty of education at York University. His research and writing has been in the role of talk in the classroom and in tea ching writing. He lives the life of a teacher vicariously through his wife, also an English teacher, and has watched their two children-one a speller, the other not-work their way through the school system. As a speller, Dennis rates himself as "better than my father, but not as good as my mother."
